Syria from Space

Three cities in darkness and light

What does the impact of the Syrian war look like from space?

Six years of war in Syria have had a devastating effect on millions of its people.

One of the most catastrophic impacts has been on the country’s electricity network.

Images from Nasa, obtained by BBC Arabic, show
clearly how the lights have gone out during the course of the conflict,
leaving people to survive with little to no power.

Each timelapse frame shows an average of the light emitted at night every month from 2012, one year after the war began.
They show that the areas where Syrians can turn lights on at night,
power their daily lives and get access to life-saving medical equipment,
have shrunk dramatically.

The city of Aleppo was Syria’s powerhouse and home to over two million people.

But the country's industrial hub became a
battleground and remained so for more than four years. Russian
airstrikes against Syrian rebels began in October 2015 and the timelapse
shows the city in almost complete darkness at night throughout 2016,
when the battle for Aleppo was at its peak.

As mains power supplies dropped off, ordinary
people had to be creative in finding alternative sources for light and
power. Fayrouz and Wallid made candles from cooking oil…

“Living with little electricity was very
hard”, says Wallid. “We broke things in our house to burn them as fuel.
We only washed every 10 to 15 days. We couldn’t put anything in the
fridge, so we bought food and ate it straight away. We lived life day to
day.”

Aleppo’s nearest power plant is still heavily
damaged after being fought over by different warring groups. It was
controlled by the Free Syrian Army in 2013, so-called Islamic State in
2014 and was taken back by government forces in late 2016.

How power became a pawn in the Syrian conflict

Electricity, like other commodities, has been
used by the warring sides to exert pressure on opponents. Across Syria,
people survive with little to no power, with a knock-on effect on other
basics like water supplies.

Last year, the International Committee of the
Red Cross said that civilians in the city of Aleppo were undergoing
enormous suffering because of deliberate cuts to water and electricity
supplies, used by each of the opposing parties to pressure the other.

The Syrian government says that damage to the
country’s seven major gas fields during the conflict means that they
have to buy and distribute fuel at higher prices, leading to shortages
and rationing.

It says that power rationing is dependent on
the “security circumstances.” It has blamed the need to ration supplies
on militants’ attacks of gas pipelines, power plants and electricity
transmission towers.

But rebels say that government bombing of
power stations, and deliberate cuts to rebel-controlled areas, are the
reasons for power outages.

In northern Idlib province, which is
controlled by opposition forces, residents told the BBC that they had
had no mains electricity for five years. Before it stopped completely,
they said, it was rationed. They believe that this was one way by which
the government punished people living in rebel territory.